SAVE THE DERBY BLOG!

This citizen Blog is dedicated to allowing the Los Feliz Community to voice their opinions regarding Saving one of Los Angeles Last Remaining Old Hollywod Landmarks. The historic "Derby" Building is the last of the remaining Brown Derby's and is set to be demolished!

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Oct 26th Adler Realty development meeting !


For those that did not know or were not able to attend the Adler Realty development meeting was last night Oct 26th. Needless to say I was overwhelmed as was Adler to the turn out of the Los Feliz community!


From the beginning of the meeting it was apparent that the property owners severly underestimated the local residents opposition to building an 81 luxury condo development with retail stores. Concerns were "loudly "voiced regarding Traffic congestion and by local building owners afraid of loosing their tenants during the construction process. Others not able to hold their frustration yelled out calling the plan Crazy and Insane. While others watched on. I have to say I actually felt a little bad for the Adler Reps who were visably shaken and at times appearing to shrink behind their displays and into the back corner of the room.

Adler Reps look on

From a spectator point of view the Adler reps came off looking very unprepared forcing them into a very defensive instead of clarifying position. There were blueprints for the building development but I was told they were only preliminary and the drawing of the development on display was in fact not the updated current model because of changes from a meeting with the city earlier that day.
Rebecca Goodman "save the derby"

In contrast the "Save the derby coalition" -spearheaded by Rebecca Goodman ran a very slick and organized effort posting volunteers at the doors to get signatures and pass out flyers for the next meeting on November 10th.



Meanwhile Renee a rep from Tom Labonge's office worked to keep the peace but did state that their position is to "Save the Derby", resulting in a thunderous applause.

The one good thing to come out of the so called "Ruckus" was that the Adler Realty came face to face with the people they will be effecting and stated that as of right now they have scrapped the idea of a grocery store and may look into the preservation of the "structure" of the derby building. If the building development is approved construction is estimated to take 12 months, 6 days a week from 7am-7pm.

It was refreshing to see actual democracy in action and a pleasure to see the Los Feliz community bonding together to get their voice heard. Below We have posted some video clips from the meeting as well as a number of photos. we apologize in advance of the shakiness of the video.



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